I need a command-line switch that allows ntbackup to append to whatever tape is in the drive

I'm running a scheduled system state daily backup and including the /um switch for it to disregard the media. I'm also running a scheduled data backuip that should append to the tape but the /g and /t switches don't seem to have wildcards to allow any tape name to be the backup destination.

What I need is to force ntbackup to append to a tape regardless of the its guid (/G) or name (/T). In this setup, a 5-tape cycle is used. Two backup jobs should execute daily: the first is an overwrite backup that disregards whether the media is used or not (it uses the /um switch) and consequently creates a pool of 5 tapes each named the same that from part of the tape drive's pool; the second should be the append job which should disregards the GUID or tape name and run the backup. Incidentally, I can't use the tape name because ntbackup reports that the name is ot unique, which is correct since the tape name is owned by more than one tape cartridge.

I can't see how the missingtape switch helps but thanks for the info, visualcoat, as it isn't documented in the TIDs that deal with the switches.

Your suggestion is exactly what I was afraid I was going to have to fail over onto.

I can create ten scheduled tasks to do the job as you said but that's a little too unwieldy.

The good news is that while I was typing my answer to visualcoat I realised that I could really simply create a backup set that covers both of the separate backup sets. In this way, I'll just have one scheduled task.

Meanwhile I'm experimenting with Yosemite's TapeWare: I'm hoping I can use it with the Compaq DLT VS80 to run an OBDR recovery on an Intel S875 mainboard-based server. Definitely beats the old restore process!! :)

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